OpenPandora Gets Release Date, New Video Published

Sure, you can buy a netbook and run Linux on it, but what if that’s still too clunky and big for you? What if you want a mobile internet device, one that is open source, preferably? Even though the OpenPandora project appeared to be shrouded in a cloud of vapour, the product design team has now published a video of the open source MID in action.

It might not be the most beautiful gadget you’ve ever seen, but we geeks know that beauty comes within, right? Let’s skip to the video, but remember that this is a model, not a working product.

Don’t let the lack of organs fool you, the team has had them working for a while now, so the casing is actually the final piece of the puzzle. Its specifications are pretty decent, sporting an ARM Cortex-A8 600Mhz+ processor, PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware, 800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD, 430-MHz TMS320C64x+ DSP Core, and the usual slots, ports, and wireless options. It runs Linux, in case you were still wondering, and the team claims a battery life of over ten hours.

Even though it was supposed to ship before Christmas 2008, it never made that date. Currently, the team estimates the release date to be somewhere around April 7th, 2009. Price will be around Â£199 (inc. VAT), $330, EUR 212 (exc.VAT).

It’s probably noteworthy that the first production batch of these has been sold out for 6 months or so. Which means that if you want one of these now, you would have to wait for probably another 6-8 months.

Hopefully, the BeagleBoard (similar hardware to the OpenPandora) gets support for raw LCD output in the rev C boards, so the geekiest of us could put something similar together ourselves